


Narcissus at the River's Edge

by zorilleerrant



Category: Travelers (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M, Multi, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Originally Posted on Pillowfort, Voyeurism, mentions of many alternate timeline relationships involving either of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 12:01:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18073049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: Phillip has a cogent reason why he can't take those little pills anymore.





	Narcissus at the River's Edge

The visions come with feelings. Phillip doesn’t notice this at first, because, after all, he’s in love with Trevor in this timeline, too. But eventually he realizes: it’s not just sight, sound, smell that bleed over from the other realities, it’s everything the other Phillip feels. Not what he thinks, not quite, although there seem to be snippets of something that could almost be called impressions of memories (he wonders if that’s how everyone else’s memory feels all the time), but everything he feels towards people, about events…that’s clear.

It’s not any of his interactions with his teammates that throw him off – he loves them too, not in quite the same way, but none of it seems out of keeping with the timeline he’s living through – even the one where Hall is living with him. He sees himself with Marcy the most (there’s two versions of them to account for, aren’t there), and Carly frequently (she has the fewest ties to protocol 5 and the least reason to stay away from him), and sometimes Grant (the timeline where his wife kicked him out, where she died, where she got spooked and ran), Grace now and then (but always casual, theirs is a physical relationship). Occasionally Boyd, in timelines where her historian died, or where too much of his team did. Kyle hits a little close to home, because they were already headed down that path when he turned, and Phillip doesn’t like to examine those echoes too closely. Ray makes more sense even when he shows up less, but it’s only the odd timeline; Phillip thinks it’s because he can’t really get that close to someone who doesn’t at least know what it means to be a historian. Even the ones with David – it’s complicated, there, it’s sometimes a grief response and somehow part of the cover and he still can’t figure out how it works except in those places where it’s Phillip and Marcy and David all together, and even then mostly in a V – don’t unsettle him the way, well, Jeff.

Jeff arrived when Carly didn’t beat him to death sometimes, which is enough longer that he and Phillip established a kind of rapport, fell into friendship, fell into bed, sometimes something more complicated than that. And he hasn’t known Jeff – traveler Jeff – that long, but he can see it. Only it’s rarely that Jeff and instead usually a different one, something that makes sense from the standpoint of the Director keeping things as streamlined as possible. Sometimes it’s the same one he knows because the mission could be moved up, but usually it’s a different Jeff, part of a different team (Hall’s, usually), and someone he doesn’t know enough to tug at his heartstrings like this, to make him laugh just because the man is smiling. But the feeling, like the echo of the smell of cooking whenever Trevor’s feeding that timeline, digs at his chest, makes him want to say something, reach out.

And Phillip can’t be in love, even just potentially, with someone he’s never even met.

(He knows he shouldn’t, but he’s checked, and other-other-Jeff is in China now, but the most he’s been able to uncover about her is one mission at a school and only because he already knew who was important there and why.)

Because of this, he knows that at least some of what he’s feeling is bleeding in from other realities, and isn’t exactly what he’s feeling here and now.

And then, of course, there’s Trevor, who’s here and here and here because Trevor lives with him, in many, many worlds. (There are ones where he doesn’t, too, and they’re still together, ones where they’ve been together since they got here. Some where Trevor needed someone to stand in for his protocol 5 when everything got a little too handsy with a high schooler and Phillip was obviously a better choice than Grant – Phillip isn’t sure how much of it is real in those timelines and how much make believe.)

He wondered about that, but even when he took so many of the little yellow pills he threw up (LD50 is high, but nausea comes much sooner than that) the feelings didn’t go away. Which was reassuring but the taste of vomit lingered in his mouth while he watched the scenes play out, wondering whether the other Phillips were jealous the same way he was, if they could feel his spilling over.

He watches Trevor and Grace sometimes, watches him push her hair behind her ear, cook her dinner, flirt, whisper something he doesn’t try to hear because leaning in still seems rude even at this remove. He watches Trevor and Hall, or Trevor and Luca, watches the tension ramp up and culminate in screaming, either with props waved in emphasis or up against a wall. He watches Trevor spar with Boyd, verbally, physically, sexually, their bodies fighting for dominance as they struggle toward the couch. He watches Trevor hold Marcy when she has to leave David, pull her close against his chest, tell her about first loves and letting someone go. He watches Trevor press his lips to Carly’s as cartoons play in the background, Jeff junior enraptured and Carly with an engagement ring on her finger. He watches Trevor wrap an arm around Grant and say it wasn’t his fault his wife died, he couldn’t have known, couldn’t have stopped it, no one could, watches him drop to his knees to blank out Grant’s worries for five minutes. Trevor and Kyle sometimes, too, and doesn’t that hurt just a little bit more.

And sometimes he watches some other Trevor and some other Phillip, watches their unspoken implications and unfinished sentences because they already know what the other is going to say, their brush of hands, Trevor’s quick peck before he steps out and again when he comes back in. Watches Trevor learn to change the foods he makes to better suit Phillip’s palate, which he’s doing anyway, but in this timeline Phillip can’t walk up behind him and wrap arms around his waist and tuck his nose right up against Trevor’s ear, and he’s stepped next to himself in those other worlds enough to know that Trevor always smells like peanut oil, and a chemical approximation of pine, and a little sweat.

That, and every now and then Trevor pins the other Phillip on the couch, draping his body across to touch every inch his hands can’t find, kissing desperately and grinding until he can pause long enough to slip his hand between them and undo their jeans, shimmy them off, press himself closer as other Phillip’s hands pull at his shoulders, his back, his ass, anywhere he can reach to pull them closer together. Sometimes Phillip slips his own jeans open and strokes himself, his hand where Trevor’s should be, and concentrates so the scene won’t slip away. Trevor’s only walked in on him a few times and none in this timeline, and anyway they were easy enough to explain away with a few embarrassed apologies. (Before anyone knew about the other timelines. After, sometimes he thinks he’ll be found out. And especially once he stops taking his pills, because he knows, just _knows_ , Trevor will find out somehow.)

That isn’t any of what he needs to know when he stops taking the pills, though. What he needs to know is what happens in the other timeline, the one where he was bitten, where his consciousness was suppressed, paused by the AI (just a child, a baby really, he can’t be mad no matter how much he wants to be, and he wants to be), where instead of losing time he started losing pieces of his memory. There are more than enough blank spots in his life, and they make him dizzy every time he thinks of them; he never needed any more of them. Especially not when his team is relying on him to something, _something,_ something he can never remember in that other timeline, and yet.

Trevor is still there, pointing him to the bathroom or the exit, reminding him whether he’s eaten, slept, just reminding him, never asking him the information he doesn’t know anymore, not pushing, just existing. Just holding him, and pressing their heads together, and telling him how precious these few moments are no matter what form they take. And he needs it, because he needs to know how to be there for Trevor.


End file.
